Three alleged workers of a security firm in China have been charged by a U.S. court of conducting hacking attacks on international corporations.

The three workers were said to be in charge of a cyber security firm in China. The U.S. believes that they systematically targeted major international corporations like Moody’s Analytics, Siemens, and the GPS maker, Trimble.

According to statements made in the indictments, the three have been accused of using email phishing scams and malware to steal business secrets. However, the three accused have managed to avoid arrest, and authorities are unsure of their whereabouts.

According to the unsealed federal indictment obtained from Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, the accused have been identified as Wu Yingzhou, Dong Hao, and Xia Lei. The report further states that the three were in charge of a cyber security firm in the city of Guangzhou, located in southern China.

According to the indictment, the accused launched a number of “coordinated and unauthorized” cyber-attacks on companies between 2011 and 2017.

The companies have also been charged with the theft of emails, confidential business secrets, and sensitive employee information.

The chief prosecutor for the U.S. government, Soo C Song stated that the arrest warrants have already been issued. She added that the hacking did not appear to be state-funded.

The Chinese company in question has refrained from commenting on the charges, but prosecutors believe that the Chinese government is aware of the events.

Cyber-attacks have been a sensitive issue between the U.S. and China for a number of years. This is certainly not the first time the U.S. and China have butted heads on the issue.

In August of this year, a Chinese man was arrested in Los Angeles and accused of selling malware that was used to hack into U.S. companies. The malware in question has already been implicated in the 2014 attack on the U.S. federal office of Personnel Management.

In 2016, a Chinese man was sentenced to four years in jail after he admitted to have hacked sensitive information from U.S. defense companies.

As such the U.S.’ suspicions regarding the three Chinese men may not be completely unfounded.

The Prosecution has stated that the case will go to trial in September 2018.

Patricia Kellogg is a journalist who has held many editorial roles at numerous high-profile publishers – both offline as well as online. She has an experience of more than 10 years in editing and proofreading articles across a range of sectors. She is also well versed with handling academic journal articles, theses, technical manuals, press releases, reports, feature articles, web site content, promotional material, policy papers, and grant proposals.